The French squadron, composed of the ships already in the islands and those brought out by Suffren, sailed from Port Louis on the 7th December 1781. It consisted of _L’Orient_, 74, _Le Héros_, 74, _L’Annibal_, 74, _Le Sévère_, 64, _Le Bizarre_, 64, _Le Vengeur_, 64, _Le Sphinx_, 64, _L’Artésien_, 64, _L’Ajax_, 64, _Le Brillant_, 64, _Le Flamand_, 64, together with seven frigates, sloops, and gunboats. The command was held by M. D’Orves; but Suffren, who though only _capitaine de vaisseau_, had local rank in the Indies as _Chef d’escadre_, was appointed to succeed on the death or resignation of his superior. D’Orves, whose health was ruined, broke down in the Bay of Bengal, resigned his command on the 3rd February 1782, and died on the 9th. On the 3rd, therefore, Suffren was again in command. His struggle with the naval power of England lasted till the news of the peace reached him on the 29th June 1783. During those seventeen months he fought the five actions on which the French dwell with pride, for they constitute the most glorious passage in the history of their navy. It is true that he took no English ship in any of them and that he failed to achieve the object he fought for. Yet we cannot but see the greatness of the man. “Brave Suffren must return from Hyder Ally and the Indian Waters; with small results; yet with great glory for six _non defeats_; which indeed, with such seconding as he had, one may reckon heroic.” Carlyle includes Porto Praya to make the tale of six, and he says the final word of any just judgment on “the Bailli.” If ever a man lived who justified Napoleon’s maxim that war is an affair not of men but of a man, it was he. It was by his personal merit that his squadron came to the very verge of winning a triumphant success. That he failed was due to the fact that the French Navy, in spite of the tardy efforts of the ministers of Louis XVI., was honeycombed by the intellectual and moral vices which were bringing France to the great Revolution—corruption, self-seeking, acrid class insolence, and skinless, morbid vanity. On its way from the islands the squadron fell in with and captured the English =Hannibal=, 50. One of her officers was placed as a prisoner on parole in the mess of the French _Bizarre_. An officer of the regiment of Austrasie, which was being carried by the squadron to aid Hyder Ali, the Chevalier de Mautort, says in his Memoirs that this officer was a cheerful young gentleman who did not speak four words of French, but made himself very pleasant. Withal he showed his professional zeal by keeping an alert watch on all that went on about him, and, adds the Frenchman, he cannot have been greatly impressed by the way our work was done. A man can gain no higher praise than this, that he raised the institution he belonged to above itself—and so much Suffren did. The English force opposed to him was to show how the virtues of an institution can atone for the deficiencies of a commonplace chief and